The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Photo by: Ken Shepherd
UAB Travels to Boca Raton on Saturday to Face Florida Atlantic
10/6/2025 3:52:00 PM | Football
BIRMINGHAM – The UAB football team looks for a conference road win this Saturday, Oct. 11, at Florida Atlantic. Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET/5 p.m. CT on ESPN+.
THREE THINGS TO KNOW:
HEAD COACH TRENT DILFER:
Opening statement:
"I am extremely disappointed with Saturday's results. I felt like we had really grown a lot on raising our floor which has been the theme of this group. We resorted back to some bad habits and kind of gave the game away. Give them a lot of credit, they played really hard as we expected and stayed true to who they are, but we gave them a ton of opportunities, so we are disappointed in that. But we have to flush it and move on and embrace the next challenge and find a way to win on the road."
On the amount of pressure put on QB Jalen Kitna on Saturday:
"I think we are still working through that. We are going to meet with them tonight. We as coaches watch the film, we have been very critical and looked ourselves in the mirror. I want to explore from our players kind of what they were thinking and what was going on in their minds. Ask them to be truth tellers to us. Did we give them too much? Did we ask too much of them? Did we have too many passes? Did we not run it enough? Kind of get their take on it. Obviously, there was a threshold of focus that we surpassed. We did something that did not allow them to focus at their highest ability and it cost us."
On evaluating the amount of run plays called in the last two games:
"I would not count Tennessee in that. We were not going to run the football against Tennessee just from a personnel standpoint. We probably could have forced a couple more, but they were not going to get much. Army, we had a chance to run it really well. We had a few runs called, and then we had those silly penalties to push us back to longer yardage situations. It is very hard to run the ball on 2nd and 13 and 2nd and 19, so we had to change those to passes. When it went to 17-7, you felt like you were not going to have that many more possessions, so we talked on the phones about, 'hey, we have to make them honor the run, but we have to get back in this thing throwing it, and then we lose a possession with the second play of a drive being an interception and that was actually a drive we were going to start the possession with a pass and then get to the run game, so we wanted to get the ball around the 30 or 40-yard line, and then start running the ball. It did not go the way we wanted it to from a run/pass balance standpoint, but we knew we were having success running the football, and the plan was to run it more in a one score game."
On the response of the team after the game and moving forward:
"I am disappointed, very disappointed, but not discouraged, and I think (the players) are the same, and they showed that. Even in the locker room after the game, how the game ended, they played hard, this group does not have the self-pity, the whining, the complaining, excuse making. They were still playing hard, they were still encouraging each other, they were still trying to find answers until the bitter end, and that is a positive sign. We have to build off that. We have to make sure this is a week where we are hungry and desperate to get better because of the disappointment over the last game, but there is no discouragement. Because once you get discouraged, once that sense of hopelessness starts, it is a downhill spiral from there so you cannot let a 2-game losing streak discourage you, you can be disappointed and you can make corrections, and you can make hard decisions, but you cannot let it go super negative."
On the defense taking a step forward after the Army game:
"Tulane last year when we got annihilated, they game got out of reach, and I kept following the book on the metrics on the 4th down go-for-its, and I regretted it all offseason. It was a game where we still would have gotten beat by a lot of points and would not have been as egregious as it ended up. I kind of feel that way (about this game), it was five-ish minutes left, and we were 4th and 10 in our own area and we go for it and we do not get it, and you put your defense in a bad position because really they had played winning football up until that point, and then you put them in a bad position and the score does not reflect how much they grew. I still do not know if I was right or wrong there, because there are five and a half minutes, too, and you convert it, you go down, and you score, you put a little stress on them, then you get a three-and-out, and now you have a ball game. I guess my point is the score does not reflect how hard they played, how well they handled that option game, we held them to one of their lowest yardage outputs in the run game of the year. So, we did a lot of really good things, and I think there was a lot of growth there."
On looking ahead to FAU:
"They are getting better. I give this staff and these players a lot of credit. They have gotten significantly better as the year has gone on. It is an Air Raid offense that creates a lot of issues in the passing game, and they do know how to run the ball, it is not like they do not care about running the football, they just run it a little differently. They lead with the pass, they are very good at what they do, so they put pressure on you from that standpoint. Defensively, they have grown a lot. I think they have settled into what they want to be, and they are playing faster, playing more physical, defeating blocks better, covering better, creating a lot more chaos for the quarterback. It is a team that is improving, and they are at home. They play better at home, although they won at Rice, but they play with more energy it looks like. Looking ahead, the weather does not look great, so that is something we have to consider as well. I say this every week, we are not good enough to where any game is not going to be a great challenge, so this is a great challenge ahead of us, and we have to get better. That is the hard thing, and I wrestle with this all the time, it felt as if we were going to play our best football based on how we prepared during the week. We cannot be discouraged again because a great week of preparation did not lead to great execution. We have to work really hard, prepare really well to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. I think one of the great lies that is told in our country to be honest with you is that hard work equals success. That is not true. There are a lot of people that work really, really hard that do not have a lot of success, but hard work gives you the best chance at having success and we need to take that approach. Just because hard work and great preparation last week did not equal success, does not mean that we should not do it again because it gives us our best chance to have success. That is another one of the things with the dot is it is too easy to go, "gosh, I did everything, I sacrificed this, I worked hard, and look, it did not get me anything." That is the wrong way of looking at it. It is, 'Okay, I am going to do that again, so I have a chance to be successful this next week.' Because if you do the opposite, you do not work hard, if you cash it in, if you are feeling sorry for yourself, if any of those things come in, now you have just limited those chances of success exponentially."
Click here to watch the entire press conference.
THREE THINGS TO KNOW:
- Saturday's game pairs the two national leaders in completions per game in FAU quarterback Caden Veltkamp and UAB's Jalen Kitna. Veltkamp is averaging 28.8 completions per game while Kitna is averaging 26.4 to rank first and second nationally in that category. FAU has the nation's 9th ranked passing attack with an average of 318.4 yards per game. UAB is 14th nationally (307.8) in passing which sets up a game that should produce offensive fireworks.
- UAB's defense is coming off its best performance of the season in which it allowed just 295 yards to Army, despite being put in difficult situations due to turnovers. The Blazers are 66th nationally in passing yards allowed (217.0) and will look for a big performance in Boca against a team that has thrown 10 interceptions this season.
- Florida Atlantic leads the all-times series 6-4 over UAB and holds a 4-1 advantage in Boca Raton. UAB's only road win in the series came back in 2014, but FAU Stadium was the site of UAB's first ever bowl victory back in 2018 with a 37-13 victory over Northern Illinois in the Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl.
HEAD COACH TRENT DILFER:
Opening statement:
"I am extremely disappointed with Saturday's results. I felt like we had really grown a lot on raising our floor which has been the theme of this group. We resorted back to some bad habits and kind of gave the game away. Give them a lot of credit, they played really hard as we expected and stayed true to who they are, but we gave them a ton of opportunities, so we are disappointed in that. But we have to flush it and move on and embrace the next challenge and find a way to win on the road."
On the amount of pressure put on QB Jalen Kitna on Saturday:
"I think we are still working through that. We are going to meet with them tonight. We as coaches watch the film, we have been very critical and looked ourselves in the mirror. I want to explore from our players kind of what they were thinking and what was going on in their minds. Ask them to be truth tellers to us. Did we give them too much? Did we ask too much of them? Did we have too many passes? Did we not run it enough? Kind of get their take on it. Obviously, there was a threshold of focus that we surpassed. We did something that did not allow them to focus at their highest ability and it cost us."
On evaluating the amount of run plays called in the last two games:
"I would not count Tennessee in that. We were not going to run the football against Tennessee just from a personnel standpoint. We probably could have forced a couple more, but they were not going to get much. Army, we had a chance to run it really well. We had a few runs called, and then we had those silly penalties to push us back to longer yardage situations. It is very hard to run the ball on 2nd and 13 and 2nd and 19, so we had to change those to passes. When it went to 17-7, you felt like you were not going to have that many more possessions, so we talked on the phones about, 'hey, we have to make them honor the run, but we have to get back in this thing throwing it, and then we lose a possession with the second play of a drive being an interception and that was actually a drive we were going to start the possession with a pass and then get to the run game, so we wanted to get the ball around the 30 or 40-yard line, and then start running the ball. It did not go the way we wanted it to from a run/pass balance standpoint, but we knew we were having success running the football, and the plan was to run it more in a one score game."
On the response of the team after the game and moving forward:
"I am disappointed, very disappointed, but not discouraged, and I think (the players) are the same, and they showed that. Even in the locker room after the game, how the game ended, they played hard, this group does not have the self-pity, the whining, the complaining, excuse making. They were still playing hard, they were still encouraging each other, they were still trying to find answers until the bitter end, and that is a positive sign. We have to build off that. We have to make sure this is a week where we are hungry and desperate to get better because of the disappointment over the last game, but there is no discouragement. Because once you get discouraged, once that sense of hopelessness starts, it is a downhill spiral from there so you cannot let a 2-game losing streak discourage you, you can be disappointed and you can make corrections, and you can make hard decisions, but you cannot let it go super negative."
On the defense taking a step forward after the Army game:
"Tulane last year when we got annihilated, they game got out of reach, and I kept following the book on the metrics on the 4th down go-for-its, and I regretted it all offseason. It was a game where we still would have gotten beat by a lot of points and would not have been as egregious as it ended up. I kind of feel that way (about this game), it was five-ish minutes left, and we were 4th and 10 in our own area and we go for it and we do not get it, and you put your defense in a bad position because really they had played winning football up until that point, and then you put them in a bad position and the score does not reflect how much they grew. I still do not know if I was right or wrong there, because there are five and a half minutes, too, and you convert it, you go down, and you score, you put a little stress on them, then you get a three-and-out, and now you have a ball game. I guess my point is the score does not reflect how hard they played, how well they handled that option game, we held them to one of their lowest yardage outputs in the run game of the year. So, we did a lot of really good things, and I think there was a lot of growth there."
On looking ahead to FAU:
"They are getting better. I give this staff and these players a lot of credit. They have gotten significantly better as the year has gone on. It is an Air Raid offense that creates a lot of issues in the passing game, and they do know how to run the ball, it is not like they do not care about running the football, they just run it a little differently. They lead with the pass, they are very good at what they do, so they put pressure on you from that standpoint. Defensively, they have grown a lot. I think they have settled into what they want to be, and they are playing faster, playing more physical, defeating blocks better, covering better, creating a lot more chaos for the quarterback. It is a team that is improving, and they are at home. They play better at home, although they won at Rice, but they play with more energy it looks like. Looking ahead, the weather does not look great, so that is something we have to consider as well. I say this every week, we are not good enough to where any game is not going to be a great challenge, so this is a great challenge ahead of us, and we have to get better. That is the hard thing, and I wrestle with this all the time, it felt as if we were going to play our best football based on how we prepared during the week. We cannot be discouraged again because a great week of preparation did not lead to great execution. We have to work really hard, prepare really well to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. I think one of the great lies that is told in our country to be honest with you is that hard work equals success. That is not true. There are a lot of people that work really, really hard that do not have a lot of success, but hard work gives you the best chance at having success and we need to take that approach. Just because hard work and great preparation last week did not equal success, does not mean that we should not do it again because it gives us our best chance to have success. That is another one of the things with the dot is it is too easy to go, "gosh, I did everything, I sacrificed this, I worked hard, and look, it did not get me anything." That is the wrong way of looking at it. It is, 'Okay, I am going to do that again, so I have a chance to be successful this next week.' Because if you do the opposite, you do not work hard, if you cash it in, if you are feeling sorry for yourself, if any of those things come in, now you have just limited those chances of success exponentially."
Click here to watch the entire press conference.
Players Mentioned
QB
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